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One of my blog readers has been a podistrist for 33 years. Here's what he had to say at the end of my blog post about gout.

When I first started practice, I saw gout about once a month. Now I see this problem 2-3 times a week....There is a presenation on youtube about Sugar the bitter truth that discussed the biochemistry of high fructose corn sugar (HCSF). When in the liver, it either goes to fat or uric acid the cause of the gout attack. Interesting that HCFS has increased dramatically in our food supply at the same time the incidence of gout has escalated. Go to a whole foods plant based diet, and all will be well.

His full comment appears at the bottom of an earlier blog, in which I responded to a question from Diana regarding this terrible disease:

No doubt, you've seen on television the big guy carrying the huge beaker with the green liquid.

My boyfriend suffers from chronic gout, and I am quite concerned. The medication he has used to treat his condition, while toxic in its own right, is the only thing that has allowed him to be reasonably mobile. The FDA has banned this medication, and their recommendation doesn't work for my boyfriend. The alternative he's been given is to use Tramadol, which is a serious pain medication with addictive qualities.

So far, I've not seen anything in your literature that addresses gout--mostly it talks about diabetes and heart disease. Will you please comment? Desperately seeking answers. Best regards, Diana

Dear Diana,

My daughter is named Diana. Thanks for your note and I hope you like our book. Not being a medical professional, I cannot specifically comment on gout. But there are numerous prominent MD's featured in our book who believe that what we eat drives up to 80% of our cost of health care. They also believe that most of those "food borne diseases" would simply disappear if we shifted to a whole foods, plant-based diet.

I know that gout is a form of arthritis and I know that a 90-year old friend of mine was just cured of his chronic arthritis after adopting a near-optimal plant-based diet. Here's what wikipedia had to say:

Gout has increased in frequency in recent decades affecting approximately one to two percent of theWestern population at some point in their lives. The increase is believed to be due to increasing risk factors in the population, such as metabolic syndrome, longer life expectancy and changes in diet. Gout was historically known as "the disease of kings" or "rich man's disease".